Middle East in the 19th century, painting the "exotic" people who populated lands that were unfamiliar to them. He includes John Frederick Lewis (1804–1876) Sir David Roberts (1796–1864), Frederick Arthur Bridgman (1847-19280 and Edwin Lord Weeks (1849–1903) as painters who made him curious to explore remote lands and get to known distant peoples. Adams designs and constructs his paintings differently from most painters and he has been influenced in completely different ways by the English painter, illustrator, printmaker and muralist Sir Frank Brangwyn (1857–1956) and the Art Nouveau painter and muralist Alphonse Mucha (1860–1939). From Mucha, he learned about swirling, moving, compositions and curvilinear line. From Brangwyn he learned about the juxtaposition of interesting shapes. Assessment and oeuvre While Adams considers himself a traditionalist and a representational painter, he is considered to be an innovative colorist and because of his interest in unusual effects of light, natural wonders and underground geological formations. Early in his career, his work consisted of Plein Air pastels and oils of the Eucalyptus trees, bridges and foothills around Pasadena. In addition, he created a series of beach scenes with figures centered on St. Malo Beach near Oceanside. The works he created on his extended trips to Asia were primarily figurative in the quick-drying tempera media to sketch, later, completing a series of larger works for his exhibitions back in America. Art historian and former Chief Curator of the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, Michael Tomor, described Adams' pastel work in an essay for the exhibition Contemporary Romanticism: Landscapes in Pastel as being "Inspired by the brilliant colors, atmospheric perspective, and scenic grandeur of the great 19th century Romanticists, Peter Adams, a student of Theodore Lukits in the 1970s, conveys the magical shimmer of light in ephemeral sunsets and the tranquility of the sea." As his teacher Lukits did in the 1920s, Adams painted in the Sierra Nevada (U.S.) during the summer and winter when atmospheric conditions were more intense. By the mid-1990s, while its origins remained out of doors, his work was becoming more stylized, showing the unmistakable influence of Art Nouveau. As he reached middle age, Adams began to do large works of unusual natural formations, geysers and pools in Yellowstone National Park or stalactites in Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. In recent years he had returned to the human figure as a subject, often combining fantasy and reality in his works, as he